SIN­SAENUM

It would have been fair enough for Joey Jordi­son to fo­cus solely on the more com­mer­cial as­pi­ra­tions of his other band, Vimic, but his col­lab­o­ra­tion with Dragon­force’s Frédéric Le­clercq con­tin­ues to be the most ex­cit­ing thing the for­mer Slip­knot drum­mer is do­ing right now. Two years on from their ex­cel­lent Echoes Of The Tor­tured de­but, the only prob­lem Sin­saenum face is that they risk be­ing too ex­treme for their co-founder’s main­stream au­di­ence and, by as­so­ci­a­tion, too main­stream to be fully em­braced by the un­der­ground metal world. In truth, Re­pul­sion For Hu­man­ity de­liv­ers more of the same high-spec but old-school death metal that made that first al­bum and 2017’s Ashes EP such un­ex­pected thrills; Joey and Frédéric clearly know their shit and de­serve bet­ter than in­ternecine snob­bery.

Echo­ing the glory days of the late 80s and early 90s in terms of hook-laden and highly mem­o­rable songs, these tunes never stray from a line of vi­cious pu­rity, but there are more than enough wild dy­nam­ics and mo­ments of at­mo­spheric in­ge­nu­ity to al­lay fears that this is lit­tle more than a re­spect­ful, im­mac­u­lately pro­duced trib­ute to an ear­lier time. It also helps that vo­cal­ist Sean Za­torsky’s feral roar is reg­u­larly aug­mented by May­hem front­man At­tila Csi­har’s har­row­ing shrieks; to­gether, they sound gen­uinely un­hinged. Mean­while, flat-out as­saults like the open­ing ti­tle track and Sworn To Hell are bal­anced by mood­ier, nas­tier ma­te­rial like the sludge-stained I Stand Alone and the creeped-out doomward spi­ral of Man­i­fes­ta­tion Of Ig­no­rance. Sin­saenum’s pooled song­writ­ing prow­ess reaches a peak of fi­nesse on the suc­cinct, in­fec­tious Fi­nal Re­solve and the sprawl­ing, epic mus­cu­lar­ity of the eight-minute My Swan Song: prime pro­gres­sive death metal at its haughty, melo­dra­matic best. From pout­ing purists to timid part-timers, ev­ery­one should give Sin­saenum’s sec­ond full-length ride through Hell at least one deaf­en­ing blast.